How ready? Like I can start right now. Okay. What kind of pose do you think is the best for like which is my okay. Like this? Does this feel natural? What do I do with my hands? I don't know what to do with my hands. Bon Jovi usually grabs the mic in like a kind of thing. And let's get started. Justin, how do we uh how does someone become a member at his hands? Well I'm glad you asked that, Madison. Uh the the answer to that question is that there is no way to do that. You can't be a member. There's no uh dotted line to sign. There's no dotted line to sign. You cannot become a member, move on, uh, do not pass go, collect $200, whatever the monopoly for. Which I've heard that there's books that have your picture in them if you're a member at some churches. Okay, so I've never been in a church as a channel. I was gonna ask, you've never so growing up, I know this isn't the only church you went to, but you started coming here pretty young. Yeah, I was in fifth grade when I came here. So I went to probably two or three churches before that. Yeah, so I grew up um not going to church at all until I was in like fourth grade. About the time you started coming here, it would have been when I started going to church, period, as a kid. And we went to a a Southern Baptist church in in southern Missouri, and Southern Baptist churches definitely have membership. Membership, and then do they keep track of like your attendance and stuff? So I don't I don't know. Um so the way it was for me growing up, like I say small, uh maybe I didn't say small, but it was a smaller church than than his hands, but not crazy small. And so what I remember is um we went to church on Sunday nights too, and Sunday mornings there was always an invitation for someone to come forward and get saved, and they would always play the same hymn, um just as I am. Like this play. Usually no one did, but we just you sit there and is anyone gonna come? Yeah. All right. Um and then on Sunday nights, there would be time if someone came forward on Sunday nights, not like in an invitation way, but if they sort of presented someone to the congregation, uh it was because they were they were becoming members. Okay, gotcha. And so I remember some of the language as a kid, it was like uh they've moved their letter of membership. That was a phrase. Uh they have this couple is moving their letter of membership from such and such church to here. Sometimes they had moved across town or you know, who knows. Um and we became members, and I remember when we became members, I was probably in like fifth grade, everyone came and shook our hands. Nice. Like it was like a line to shake our hands. And then there was a directory, what you're talking about. So every uh every couple of years they would have a photographer and you would all come and you're dressed nice and you'd have a family photo, and then there would be this printed out church directory. Was there a description of you, or is it just your picture and your name? It was our it was like, yeah, it was the family name, you know, the it was Mike and Rhonda McTear and the kids listed, and then like our address and phone number. That's cool. Like you could so if you're like, hey, where what's that guy from church? What's his name? You could go to the front desk. You could open up the book. You all you could um I'm pretty sure you got a copy of the directory. Oh wow. I mean, this was that's awesome. This was the late 90s. Technology was really bumping. It was a phone with pictures, and uh like you probably had to pay to be in it or something like that, like to pay for it. I don't know, because it'd be pretty expensive to print out. Yeah, like if you buy it, you could buy it. You could buy what it was. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like a scam. But uh yeah, so membership was sort of a big deal. You became a member. Um I don't think they kept track of maybe they kept track of attendance. Sure. But what it means what it did mean was that the church's membership number and the church's attendance number were very different. So you could say, oh, we're a church of eight hundred members. Right. And what that means is you have eight hundred people that at some point have become members, but maybe four hundred of those people are like haven't seen them in years. Okay, gotcha. But it didn't, you know what I'm saying? It could also be the other way, where you if you are experiencing growth as a church, you have double attendance and half membership because they might have not been involved. It could be. I I don't think that's typically the way that it went. Um it's like a forever number that just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Trevor Burrus, Jr. How many members do you have? And so and his hands has never had membership. So what is the what's the rationale there? Maybe it's like what's the pluses and minuses of membership might get us into the rationale on why we don't have membership. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Sure. So I'll say this on the front end. Um a couple years ago, uh maybe five or six years ago, I actually thought really hard about adding membership to his hands. Like I had a serious uh I mean like multi-month-long mental debate. And then I actually brought other people into it. I think I discussed some of it with you, because if I remember right, there's a podcast called To Be the Church that we've listened to, and you sent me an episode of theirs. About their membership. About their membership. And I I think I remember that specifically. But point is, I was thinking about that a lot because there are a lot of pluses to membership. I grew up in church culture with membership. Um and it's something we've never had here. And I was thinking at the time, like, man, this could be something that And what were some of those pluses? Yeah, so the pluses are you have you have a bit of a um you can have a different conversation with someone who's a member than someone who just comes. Right? There's a different level of commitment. And so if if you don't have membership, you actually don't have people making uh official commitments to your church. Right. And there is a reality that a we say this sometimes um on staff, you know, we're the people who go here are not our customers. Um now we love everyone, we want to serve everyone, we want to meet people's needs, and we want to do everything with excellence and make it great. We're always working hard and on how to make check-in faster or how to, you know, you'll talk to me sometimes, hey, the line for checkout uh in the youth area has gotten a little out of out of hand. If we change where we put things and if the treehouse kids check in over there, it'll, you know, those are customer service type things. We're trying to make the experience better, but at the core, the people who are part of our church are not our customers. It's not a group of people that we're just trying to keep happy. A church is a group of people who have come together under the banner of Jesus and should be working together to accomplish whatever that church is is given to do, right? Whatever God has called that church to do and to do it well. And so um membership is more about commitment. And if you have people who are members, you can say, hey, if you're a member, this is sort of what we need you guys to do, we need you guys to step up. We need you guys to help with this. Now, if you're not a member, um yeah, then you know So it provides a platform for like accountability. It's accountability, absolutely. And some churches, um I I know churches uh even locally, I'm friends with guys on staff and and pastors who uh very big into membership. And and to the point, I know a church that if you wanted to become a member, first you have to interview with like multiple elders of the church. But and it's like a we'll see and if you go through all those steps, then you become a member. And I think part of that, so there's like the accountability thing, and there's probably realities of giving, realities of attendance, just things that it's serving, it's serving. 100%. So a lot of churches will say, well, if you're a member, we expect you to give where you would serve. Ask that to a non-member in the same way that you ask it to a member. But then I I think too, it's like we might be on the outside looking in and be like, that's a very intense process, interviews, et cetera. And I don't know all of the details of what that looks like. But it also is probably a really easy platform for community. Like you said your whole church lined up and shook your hand, which as a kid might be really weird, but you also get a sense of like, okay, now everyone knows Mike and Rhonda and Justin and all the siblings, and it's like they get to know that. So I guess there is that love. There's positives. No, absolutely there are positives to it. A lot of churches that I really love and respect. Um non-denominational churches do membership. And so there are a ton of positives, and that's why a few years ago I was like, man, what had happened to specifically was um, and this is normal, like it's normal at any church with or without membership, where there have just been some people who had been here for a long time and then they they they left. And uh it wasn't like some giant scandal, they just you know they left. And I remember thinking, like, man, it's so crazy how you could be here for a decade and be like a involved person, and then you leave and you're not it's like, well, it never said Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm just I've never made a commitment, you know what I mean? But in my head, I probably saw this person specifically as like a committed person. I guess they were. It just it got me wrestling with things, and you know, I'm the second guy to lead the church, not the first. And so part of my job in in this position, being the second person, I'm not the one God called to start the church. So I have to constantly weigh and discern and pray and think through what needs to stay the same and what needs to change. There are things that our founding, you know, pastors started that I need to preserve at all costs. And I have to figure out what those things are. And these are the things where we say this can never change. And then there's other things that I have to go, you know, that was for a time and a season, and but I don't think it was the right thing forever. Um, we've or that didn't go well, and we need to make adjustments. And so I have to kind of always what needs to stay the same, what needs to change. And sometimes there's things that I probably would have done differently had I been the person that God called to start it, but I'm not. And specifically on that note, like a filter I have is if it would change the culture of the church, okay, um, like seriously change our church's culture. If I'm gonna make a change that would do that, I better be really clear. Like I better have really heard from the Lord on that. Because there's changes we can make that are just logistical, there's changes that we can make or style, but man, something that would fundamentally change the culture of our church, I need to be really certain about that. And so I never got to that point with with membership. I felt like it would change the culture of our church. Yeah. I've never had membership before. Adding that wouldn't and I just didn't have that. I had these are the positives, these are the negatives. At the time, I probably liked the positives because it felt it felt certain, right? Yeah. Membership. Okay, now members do this, yeah. Correct. But it just it was like, nah, that's not that's not for us. So what were the negatives? Negatives might even be too strong of a of a word that would change the culture drastically enough for you to say, no, it's not worth it. So almost all churches that start, right? Like if you're not not like a church that's been around for hundreds of years, but even when that church started, there's almost always a reactionary element to that. And so um, you know, for example, when we first started, 2005, one of the things that's never happened here in the history of our church is we've never passed a plate. Now, I think passing plates for giving is probably not that common anymore because digital is almost everyone's giving with everyone's texting. Texting to give or giving whatever. Um, but I there's probably still a lot of churches that there's a moment in the service that is set aside for bringing an offering. And that's how it was for me growing up. There's a passing of the plate. Um our our founding pastors were really convicted that church money stuff was just kind of out of control in America and that people just felt constantly like, you're gonna go to church, they're gonna ask me to give money, they're gonna pressure me, whatever. And so they're they were like, we're never gonna do that. Um there were a lot of things like that in our culture that were just very opt-in. That was something that um it's that Stephen Susan used to say all the time, we're an opt-in church, and membership is opt-in, it's not a force thing. But they were just hyper-focused on removing anything that felt like pressure. Aaron Ross Powell Well, pressure, and then there's an exclusivity of like you come to a church and you're not really part of it. I think that's a feeling that they're sensitive to. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, they were sensitive to that feeling for sure. And also there was just sort of an overall officialness. Right. Like it's an official thing, and that's kind of our nature in religion is to make everything official. But they were high-this is the most important thing. They were really focused on Jesus. And I think they looked at Jesus and his ministry, and it just didn't seem that official. Like his ministry didn't seem to be a, you know, all right, now. Sign on the dotted line. Here's the picture moment. And you're definitely like splitting hairs here because to follow Jesus was a serious commitment in and of itself. People would have known. People would have known you're risking like you're gonna be excommunicated from your religion. Your family's gonna kick you out, you're gonna get persecuted. So it wasn't like it wasn't a flippant decision, but there was just something they saw about Jesus that was very like, hey, I like you. You want to be part of this? Great, you're part of it. Not say yes or no, it's first take first go through this class and and then what whatnot. And so um that sort of that part of our culture, the not having that official thing, um, it just felt very organic and it felt very much like the way that Jesus' ministry sort of worked. And so um, you know, sim similar to baptisms, I know I'm kind of rambling on a bunch of different things, but that Jesus filter, well, when people get baptized here and they always they don't have to be baptized by one of the pastors. And so I if someone asked me to baptize them, I say yes. Um, if that would be meaningful to them. But our encouragement is always to have someone you know who is a someone who is a believer who has already been baptized, parent, friend, baptize you. And that's because they looked at Jesus. That filter came in when they started, because Jesus didn't baptize people, his disciples did. It actually said that. You know, and so they said, Well, okay, Jesus let his disciples baptize. We should let people be baptized by other disciples. It doesn't have to be the pastor. So that was always the main filter. It's like, how did Jesus do it? Let's just do that. And because they were so sensitive to religion in the negative sense, not the positive sense, they were like crazy on guard against anything that would sort of tip the scales in a more religious way. Yeah. Religion in terms of like man-made processes and control and pressure. And so if that man, passing a plate, right, that's feels like that's religion. Membership fell in that category. You know what I mean? Um, having titles, like, I'm not Pastor Justin, I'm Justin. Pastor is my role, right? It's not my title. That just that kind of stuff was all about keeping it simple, keeping it organic. Yeah. And you know, yeah, and there's only the only thing that I can think of in scripture that it has that official sense is when they're replacing Judas as one of the apostles. Right. And they got slots for it. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like, well, we have 11 now, we needed 12. Right. Because Jesus picked 12. Jesus picked 12, so we need 12 to make it make it happen. Yeah. And so, but in the church of like after that, there's not like this official, you know, like membership. There that there doesn't seem to be a process in place. No, it was definitely probably more felt than I mean, there's exp like Paul talks about how someone in the church was like way out of line. Right. So, hey, you guys need to like Yeah, and there's kind of distance yourself. People that are known, you know, it's you're known a real community there. And and community is the right word. Lord's Supper, you know, for them was like a meal that they shared together, and that was something like like being a Jesus follower in Corinth would have been your everyday life and circle would be with the other Jesus followers, right? Um so yeah, so it just felt, you know, it was like very official to add that. There are positives because you do have the ability to have a greater degree of accountability, but I think what's been so cool for me is I can say this, and again, um lots of churches do memberships not wrong. When I was really thinking through adding membership, um, it was definitely in a season where I was dealing with some frustrations that I had dealt with, you know, being a pastor for five or six years at the time and having situations where people have maybe in my mind had like, oh, they kind of let us down or whatever. It was sort of a, well, this would be a way to have more control. Right. Right? Like, and hopefully I have good filters where I, you know, sometimes my mind goes down that goes down that path and I can catch it. Control and fear are always connected. Like we only try to control the things that we're we're afraid of of happening. And um, if control or having more control is the is any is any part like a driving factor in a decision you're making, especially in a church setting, it's it's probably bad. Right. Because the opposite of control and fear would be like trust and faith. Yeah, that's why you were able to say, oh, that person was committed for 10 years, why are they able to get get up and go? Well, it's like, well, they're free. Correct. They're free, correct. They're free to. 100%. And so even like Sunday is a good example of this. James, uh, who was part of our worship team for a long time. Um, you know, James, like he's going to a different church now. And it's not because he has some type of giant frustration with us or we had a fight or anything at all. I mean, he and his family live uh in Kennesaw, which is I mean, you live in Kennesaw, but there's not a ton of I mean, there's people from Kennesaw who are here, but there's there's all I know there are, I know there are. We we think we we think we live really far away from each other because this is the middle point. I know, I know that. But my point is just like there's people where I live, right 35 minutes away from here, that go to his hands, there's people at my kids' school that do, but it's not the main church that the people in that area go to. The same is probably true in Kennesaw. Yeah. Like there's people from Kennesaw, but it's not, there's really good churches in Kennesaw. And James and and his wife live really close to a church in Kennesaw. They have some friends that go there that are connected to their family, and so it just kind of like made sense. And the point is, like, there'd be one way for me to go, James. No, you signed this document. You remember it's still until I release you. Until I release it. Well, it's just that's not how it works. Anyway, you go. But the flip side of that is to go, wow, James, and this is the conversation we had when we had a lunch and he talked about, I think he was nervous, like, I don't know. I and I meant this. I was like, man, thank you for all of your years here, and you've made this place better. Thank you. And I'm actually really excited for I'm sure that church needs you. I'm sure you're going to make that church better. And we have a great relationship with James, and so we had this album release, and he's part of the album that our worship team was part of, and so he came and and sang. And you're singing on Sunday, yeah. Yeah, singing on Sunday here. And it wasn't some big deal of like, well, hold on, James, you know, he's he was, he's no longer. No, it's like when because we don't have membership, and that's probably the only thing, but it helps reinforce that we're all we're all the kingdom, we're all the family of of God. And so, you know, if you attend here, great. If not, that's okay. And if if you go attend somewhere else for a while and you come back, yeah. I've got lots of students that come here on Sundays, go to a different youth group on Wednesdays, and it's fine. The interesting sort of uh caveat to that is that and I've seen this be a really cool thing. Um as a church, it's not just that it's not just people make a commitment to a church. Uh a lot of times that's what you think about, but churches make commitments to people. And you see this because you're involved in the ministry. I mean, how many times has someone reached out in a crisis situation and they need help? Right. And we we our answer is always it's always yes. Like now it doesn't always that yes sometimes means financial help in in major ways. Sometimes that help that help can mean we come alongside and help someone with counseling. Um You and I have done a lot of funerals or been involved in a lot of situations like that, where maybe it's even someone who hasn't been here in five years. Right. But then they But there's we're still their church. In their mind, yeah, someone in their family passes away and they reach out to us and we don't go, well, hey, sorry, you're you were crossed off the membership. You're not a member. Um and so the interesting thing about the church dynamic is that we make a huge commitment to our people. Our our heart is always that we're here for you. I think a church should be like a safety net around your family practically, so that when when you fall, when those things happen in life, that church is there to sort of catch you and pick you up. And we do that all the time. And it's not based on whether or not you're a member, or you're giving, or you're a church. No, we don't look at any of that. We say literally, if this is if you consider this your church, if in your heart you're like, that's my church. Um, I mean, we're here for you, whatever. I mean, even if you weren't, like, we don't go, well but the point is if you're like, no, his hands is my church, cool. Like, what can we do for you? How can we help you? Um and it's been actually interesting to reconnect with people sometimes after a period of years where Yeah, 10 years later. Yeah, I've had that happen. Yeah. And um you know, if students in the youth group, um, there was one guy, for example, that was one of my students way back in the day, a little older than you, his name was Josh. And I was really close to Josh for a while, but then he went off to college somewhere else, kind of just fell off the radar and and and all that. And then his one of his parents passed away and he called me and he's like, Can you come to the funeral? And I hadn't seen him for a long time, but for whatever reason, like in that moment, I was the person that he thought of. And then another one his other parent passed away like six months later. So I did both of their funerals in a six-month period of time after having not seen him. And so I I guess I'm probably getting off the membership idea. The point is Well, you're saying community can happen without membership. And commitment. Yeah. Yeah. Community and commitment can happen without the official channels. And that's just sort of the way things. Yeah, and so it worked. When someone is new to his hands, what does it look like to be what does it look like? Obviously, there's like a oh, I've decided this is my church. Some people come here one Sunday and they go, like, I've decided this is my church. Some people try it out for six months or are figuring it out. But if they have said, like, this is my church, uh, in other churches where membership is a thing, that next step is sign the thing. You sign the thing and you make a commitment. I mean, I think for us, like what does it look like is the next step when you've made that decision. For all intents in terms of practicality, the idea of membership would be that you're a participating in the church. Right? You're no longer just an observer. I know that they're here a lot and they bring light to the people around them and they're encouragers, and it's like, yeah, you're participating in the church. And like what you said too, receiving. From the church, because I think what a lot of people need when they're in church is healing and time and whatever that looks like. And so if a church is equal parts, you know, uh hospital as well, you'd say, like, who's part of this hospital? It's like, well, the doctors are part of the hospital, but the patients are also welcoming the administrative desk. Yeah, right. All of it. The cleaning up, all that. And so there's a range of being a member at his hands where it's like, oh yeah, I'm here for this season to heal. And like, I can't serve, I can't afford to give. It's not the season right now, whatever. It's like, well, you're still part of our church. Correct. Correct. And I what I have found is probably most helpful for me is that it is human nature to draw lines. In fact, I think there was a message uh you may have sent it to me, but Tim Mackey from the Bible Project was talking about how religion draws lines. And so like the Pharisees saw everyone, you're either clean or unclean. Clean or unclean, right? And Jesus, it was more about trajectory, like you're moving toward him or you move away from him. And so uh he just had different ways, you know. He was kind of trying to draw who's in and who's out with Jesus, right? And it's not as clean of the physics like, well, this in Jesus, it was like this weird sort of amoeba shape, because it was really more about the status of your heart, and that's how we are at his hands. Like it's we don't really think in terms of who's in, who's out. That's not we're not having meetings like, all right, move this person to the out list. They're in now, they're in again. We don't do that. But there's sort of just this felt like you look at someone and you don't go, oh, you're in, but you kind of look at them and go, we're in this together. Like I know that you're someone who we're we're we're moving in the same direction toward Jesus, but also united by the vision specifically of what his hands have taught us. And this community is like, I'm growing spiritually here, you're growing spiritually here. Um, you know, there was a guy who got baptized uh on Sunday, uh, we had a man baptize his son. Uh his son's name is Judah. And uh and that son, his son Judah is my son Judah's really close friend in church. And so they're like, they get along really well at church. They're always trading Pokemon cards and stuff like that. Not so much anymore, but like a year ago. Sure. A year ago, my Judah would like freak out if he forgot his Pokemon card book on the way to church because he's like, Me and Judah, we're gonna trade cards. And you know, Matt and I, we've never really had some type of big official are you in meeting. But we just we see each other all the time on Sundays. Our kids are both growing here. Um, I had a meeting with Matt last week, and I there was this thing we're gonna do next year that I was thinking Matt would be a really good person to help with that. And he's like, Yeah, let's do it. And it's my I haven't found that not having membership gets in the way of that. Right. You know what I mean? It's just very much a community thing, community commitment without the official channels. Um, that's how it works here. Cool. So I would say, you know, in closing, and for the purposes of a promo, um sometimes I use this part. Uh but not having membership. What I'm about to say is gonna blow your mind as what Justin just said. No, it's gonna be so good. It's gotta be the first thing in the video. So the way, no, like okay, so we always take like a snippet from this and we'll play it on a Sunday morning as like a teaser, like, hey, we're releasing this on Wikipedia. But you knew it was coming. Well, and I feel bad for Zach sometimes because like we have a 45-minute conversation or 30 minutes or whatever, and he's gotta go through that and find the the snippets that will, you know, that's a lot of work. Or I could just be like, let me kind of sum it up and use this part. But one time I did that and Zach didn't use that part at all. And I was like, oh, I did that for that reason. But how is he supposed to know? Read my mind. Um so to tie it all together. No, no, no. This is it clean. You can't laugh. It's gotta be clean. Okay. So to wrap it all up. Could you sum up everything that you could you sum up everything? Let me let me step up. Let me step into like my let me step into my if the worship team would come up. Worship team, you guys can come up. That's how I that's how my brain works. Now I can close everything. Um no, not having membership is one of the more unique aspects of our culture. It is something very often at newcomer gatherings, people are like, I really like this church, how do I become a member? And we're like, you can't. Um we don't have membership. If you've grown up in church, that can almost be like, why? That's that's what churches do. They have membership and I want to join and whatnot. But as we sort of unpack why we why we don't, we find that it's really closely tied to a lot of really important cultural aspects of who we are as a church. Um that we're really on guard against things becoming too official, kind of becoming corporate and not organic, um, or you know, too religious, and not religion in the good sense, religion in the negative sense, that religion thing you gotta guard because a little bit of religion gets in and it's like yeast, right? It just takes everything over. And so we are hyper committed to loving people and serving people, but it's not about whether or not you're a member, it's just about whether or not you're part of what God's doing here. And that doesn't have to be an official thing, you know?